Against Death Penalty, Essay Example

Death penalty is a situation where an individual is serving life imprisonment after committing a crime. Many people in various state prisons are serving death penalties. Many people find themselves in a point to support death penalty due to the decisions made by the judges when offering penalties. For example, when a judge gives light sentences for people committing murder crimes and other violent crimes (Steiker 2012, p. 329). Many people are forced to support death penalty such that they feel satisfied when the criminals are jailed for life instead of being offered light sentences. In real sense, liberals have offered other alternatives instead of death penalties. The liberals have called the judges to be fair when handling various judgments. The judgments should be decided in relation to the crime committed by an individual. As the liberals understand and fight against the death penalty, they offer various reasons in support of the opposition.

Racial and Economic Discrimination

When death penalty is applied, people are not served equally. For example, in America white were favored more than the black. Most of those who served a death penalty were the blacks while the whites who committed the same crimes served light sentences (Hill 2014, p. 10). In 1982, out of 1058 prisoners who were on the death row, 42% were black while about 12% f the total population of the country is black. Those who received the death penalty were poorly educated, poor, and represented by lawyers appointed by the court or public defenders. Death penalty is practiced in a discriminatory manner because it was suggested that lives of some victims are worth more than others.

Death Penalty is Capricious and Arbitrary

When two or more people commit the same crime, some will be sentenced to death while others are not or face light sentences. Those who are freed or face light sentence are said to have committed the same crime but no evidence to jail them. It is not fair for one to face the death penalty while another one is freed or face light sentence yet they commit the same crime. For example, in 1979 two men in Florida were charged with killing John Spenkelink. The first man was sentenced to death while the second turned state’s evidence, and he was freed. After a very short time, a man killed two people in San Francisco, and he was jailed for seven years in prison. The one at Florida had killed one person while the other one in San Francisco had killed two people, and they received different punishments.

Publicity

Death penalty gives worst offenders publicity in which they do not deserve. The offenders are given chances o expound a national audience their punishment and ideas, country, God, and anything that happens in their minds (Unnever & Cullen 2012, p. 536). For example, Steven Judy and Gary Gilmore received reams of publicity as they were nearing their dates with the grim reaper. It has been argued that if the executions become frequent and widespread as proponents of the death penalty are hoping, publicity of each murderer will decline. Instead of the murderers facing heady weeks before the cameras, they face a lifetime of obscurity in prison; path of violence might be less glamorous to them.

Corruption effects on the Public

Execution of the death penalty on the offenders has corrupting effects on the public. Thomas Macaulay argued that the Puritans hated bear baiting not because it causes pain to the bear, but it gave pleasure to the spectators. When the offenders have been punished to serve death sentenced, they are escorted to the chamber and given stay of execution. At this point, the families will part with something for them to pay last visits, last words, last walk, and last dinner to the offenders. Death penalty should be abolished or replaced with other punishment, which will portray transparency to the public.

Limits of the death penalty

It is difficult to limit death penalties to the worst cases or offenses. Those who commit worst or light offenses face the same death penalty. There is no law that will define the point at which death penalty is applicable or not to different murderers or other crime offenses. Some offenders have money that they can pay best lawyers to represent them, and it will be difficult to apply a penalty to worst murderers who are wealthier (Dinsmore & Packer 2014, p. 388). Death penalty is like any other form of violence since it is difficult to limit once the hard cases have persuaded the society to let down the bars such that specific problems can be solved.

Right to Life

Everybody has a right to life event the offenders have a right to life. Making them face death penalty is violating their right. Nobody has the right to terminate someone’s life in any way, either abortion or capital punishment. No individual has the right to play with God, and no one believes the state encourages respect for life it accepts premeditated killing. Camus was right when he said that some crimes require severe punishment, but no knows enough to say when anyone should die.

References

Dinsmore, A. & Packer, I. K. (2014). Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty: Factors to Consider. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 42(3), 387-389.

Hill, K. R. (2014). American and European Union Approaches to the Death Penalty: America Should Consider a New Perspective. Revista de Direito Internacional (Brazilian Journal of International Law), 10(2).

Steiker, J. M. (2012). American Death Penalty: Constitutional Regulation as the Distinctive Feature of American Exceptionalism, The. U. Miami L. Rev., 67, 329.

Unnever, J. D., & Cullen, F. T. (2012). White perceptions of whether African Americans and Hispanics are prone to violence and support for the death penalty. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 49(4), 519-544.